Not Quite
by Moiranne Rose
Summary: Fifty ways to avoid saying those three words.


**Hey all.**

**So actually this was on my lj for a long while. Then I decided I should share it here because I haven't been very active and my next TsengReno is still in its hatchling stages. Was that a hint? Oh yes, yes it was.**

**Enjoy!

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****Title: Not Quite**

**By: Moiranne Rose  
**

**Summary: Fifty ways to avoid saying those three words. Tseng/Reno**

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**_For Nimorid, Aimed Mischief, Rachel and M, with love._

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1. From the first time they met, even though Tseng never said it, he never doubted Reno's ability to hold his own in a battle, big Bahamut or no.

2. When Tseng found his first grey hair, he pulled it out himself. When Reno found his first grey hair, well, he got Tseng to pull it out.

3. ShinRa made them inhuman, but Reno was the one who showed him just how animalistic a mako-injected man could be.

4. Sometimes, a scrap of seasons nullified slips through the cracks and leaves would fall. When that happened, he would pick up the reddest one and bring it home because it reminded him of Reno's hair.

5. They were drawing up their life expectancies with their fingers on his apartment roof lazily. They averaged it out to be about 40 years, because neither of them wanted to even think about getting old.

6. Rude picked up his first pair of shades three weeks after Reno got his tattoos. Now they were waiting for 'Laney to hop on the bandwagon and get a piercing or something.

7. _You're beautiful, you know?_ he mumbled, into his red hair. Reno turned over and smile-smirked. _You're going soft, you know?_

8. The first time they kissed, all he could think of was how their bodies didn't fit together in _just that way_. Then Tseng leaned down further and he realised cliches weren't for them anyway.

9. When Reno stumbles back from a mission, blood on his hands and another killing tucked away in the recesses of his mind, Tseng is in his apartment, putting a bookmark between pages of a novel and standing up to welcome him.

10. Tseng does his paperwork every night from 7 to 11. Somehow, Reno is always there to free him from his locked-in cage by 8.30.

11. As Turks, they don't have annual vacations much, but Tseng will never forget the time Reno got Elena to make a tent in the middle of the coffee room with him.

12. If Tseng's vice was coffee, his would always be the jittery black-and-white of late-night cartoons.

13. For his 32nd birthday, Reno managed to wrangle his email from the company directory and sent a hundred chain messages in a flurry of electronic activity. Sifting through the entire thing was only worth finding the last email with _My place tonight_ as the only words written on it.

14. Reno always says it's chance that they met. Tseng thinks it's more of misfortune.

15. There was a clump of clovers next to the path leading up to Reno's flat. The redhead always made it a point to step on them when he came home, because he didn't need good luck most of the time.

16. Reno swears it's always a coincidence, but he knows something is up when he constantly finds his mug filled with decaf in the morning.

17. Their favourite colours are gunmetal blue and Bolt white. It comes with the job.

18. Assassinations have always been straightforward, it's just that Reno's creativity sometimes ends up making everything just that much more complicated.

19. It started as a feeling. Somehow, the fungal growth of affection spread toothicktoofast and they were falling onto crumpled sheets grasping, gasping and giving in completely.

20. It was their destiny not to love. This, he decided, rubbing his thumb lightly on Reno's red tattoos, was not love.

21. It was desire, lust and frustration.

22. Reno never got over the fact that, as the second-in-command, he actually needed to complete his paperwork more than half of the time. Promotion had never been this horrible.

23. Reno took good enough care of the potted plant from an unknown girlfriend from before. But when it came to terrorists demanding environmentally-friendly regimes, he was always the first to brandish his Mag Rod.

24. Tseng has no problems with his self-esteem, especially when Reno is under him and he knows he's the only one that can make the red-haired murderer scramble his words-syllables-letters.

25. The first time, Reno had all the experience but Tseng pulled his position and his gun from the holster at his side.

26. He was all hard lines and angular jawbones, but when his hair was out from his elastic and his crumpled uniform stuck to his skin from running three blocks in the rain, he was endearing enough for Tseng to turn his apartment upside down looking for the spare key to his subordinate's apartment.

27. The photograph was faded, but the meaning was clear. As was the "Happy Anniversary" scrawled at the side, directly underneath the scratched-out title, "ShinRa's Finest: The Turks".

28. Geraniums were the colour of sunsets and blood. One they'd never seen, and the other they saw far too much.

29. Reno's speed dial consisted of eight food delivery hotlines and one boss-man hotline.

30. If life was compared to a walk along a forest path, it was comforting to know that his choice of "casual partner" could shoot the brains out of any predator along the way.

31. Two cannot be honest lovers without first being friends. It was just as well that they were neither honest nor in love.

32. Sometimes, if he is in a good mood, he will pass by Reno's place on the way home and put a stack of undone paperwork on the dingy porch where it won't get wet if it rains.

33. Him, Laney, Rude and Tseng. They are a group, a quartet, a ring of individuals. One day, maybe, he will admit to himself that they are a family as well.

34. The hundred and twenty-eighth time they kiss, Tseng can only think about how much Reno has grown.

35. Being a Turk was a game of staying alive and hitting your enemy harder than he was hitting you. Being a lover was peanuts compared to that.

36. Tseng is only honest when with the President. Reno is only honest if his hands are twisted in Tseng's hair and his lips trace the soundless words of "_more-more-more_".

37. The day Tseng got shot for the first time in 12 years, Reno heaved him onto his lean arms and carried him two miles to the closest hospital to get help.

38. At the war front, it was Angeal's place to speak of honor and Tseng's place to speak of efficiency.

39. When at work, their places were simple; Tseng was the boss. When at home, in bed or otherwise, things weren't as clear-cut.

40. Before he became a Turk, his image of them was a stack of gil. Now, it's a bloodstain.

41. The moment Reno was incapacitated by a bullet to the shoulder, Tseng took the incentive to dig it out and cast a Cure, ignoring the profanities that spilled from his babbling, delirious lips.

42. Innovation was Scarlet's job. Execution was the Turks'.

43. The day Reno found the Internet was the day Tseng left it for good.

44. Something about the way Reno looked when he woke up after a hangover in Tseng's bed gave him a certain, inexplicable joy, even though his arms ached like _shit_ from carrying him all the way back.

45. Reno was a meticulous killer but a careless half-lover. Sometimes, when he's had a few drinks, he wishes Reno could swap roles sometimes.

46. He always said that bullets made the fastest killings, but there was something in the red-black of an EMR-inflicted wound that looked savagely beautiful, even as the target gave a last – _pained –_ jolt and fell still.

47. There was nothing kind about the way that Tseng tugged his bandages around the gaping wound – _always so fucking careless on the first mission –_ or the rough push that sent him sprawling onto the back seat of the sedan – _don't bleed on my upholstery –_ but that, he decides as he thinks back that that was the tipping point.

48. When he comes in, frazzled and exhausted, from a mission gone awry, he sees Reno all over his couch – _the pizza box, the hair at one end, the boots-still-on-feet at the other – _and he smiles (instead of frowning) and pushes the sleeping Turk onto the floor.

49. One Friday night before the Meteor, when Reno is asleep on his unfinished paperwork, Tseng hears his dream-rambling, _Kay _and _Good Gaia, yes_, and doesn't know why his Wutaiin takeout won't go down as smoothly anymore.

50. Note to self: Ladybugs camouflage well in Reno's hair. Another note to self: he hates them.

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**A/N: My working definition of the two of them together: 50 sentences. Above.  
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**My reason for the two of them together: 1 sentence. They keep me coming back here to write them.  
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**Love and Cookies,**

**MR  
**


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